Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme performs Thursday at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. DAVID HALL, FOR THE REGISTER

Set list: Queens of the Stone Age at the Wiltern

Main set: Keep Your Eyes Peeled / You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire / Sick, Sick, Sick / First It Giveth / No One Knows / My God Is the Sun / I Sat by the Ocean / The Vampyre of Time and Memory / I Never Came / Kalopsia / If I Had a Tail / Turnin' on the Screw / Burn the Witch / Make It Wit Chu / Smooth Sailing / Little Sister / I Think I Lost My Headache / Go With the Flow / I Appear Missing

Encore: ...Like Clockwork / Feel Good Hit of the Summer (with a snippet of Amy Winehouse's Rehab) / A Song for the Dead

Queens of the Stone Age, the long-running Southern California band that is about to take a significantly bigger seat at the round table of today's titans of heavy rock, has been deliberately vague on details about its coming album, ...Like Clockwork.

The ambient yet air-tight 10-track collection – dense with existential romance and apocalyptic visions and more accessible than the slow-morphing group has ever been without sacrificing sonic trademarks – has come cloaked in cryptic messages and foreboding mystery.

All of that finally started to peel away Thursday night at a tremendous Wiltern Theatre performance, a stateside premiere of the new material recorded for NPR.

Due June 3 from Matador Records, the group's debut with the venerable indie giant after a decade on a major label (Interscope) is also its first work in six years, the widest gap in an increasingly sterling discography. Not that its members have been idle that whole time – just the opposite, actually.

Guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, a crucial Queens sound-shaper since 2002's turning point Songs for the Deaf, revived his role alongside Tool's Maynard James Keenan in another all-star group, A Perfect Circle. Multi-instrumentalist Dean Fertita, who'd already assisted Brendan Benson and the Raconteurs before taking a spot in Stone Age, joined up with Jack White and the Kills' Allison Mosshart to make the Dead Weather.

Most notably during this period, QOTSA's leader and only constant, Joshua Homme, reshaped the sound of British outfit Arctic Monkeys by producing their 2009 album Humbug while simultaneously gathering with Dave Grohl (the drummer 40-year-old Homme has known since he was 19) and Led Zeppelin legend John Paul Jones to form the thunderous power trio Them Crooked Vultures.

Grohl, whose distinctive chops anchored "Deaf," does so again on several Clockwork cuts, while Monkeys frontman Alex Turner, who gave Homme the title for one of the disc's most captivating songs, "Kalopsia," appears on the record as well. As does Sir Elton John, who might be the one providing piano arpeggios (and some backing-vocal hollers?) on "Fairweather Friends," which I think features the falsetto of Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears in its opening moments.

It's hard to know for sure, as liner notes haven't entirely been revealed, just a list of contributors that also includes Homme's wife Brody Dalle (formerly of the Distillers, now of Spinnerette), frequent Queens guest star Mark Lanegan, once-estranged former bassist Nick Oliveri, electronic artist James Lavelle (one-half of UNKLE) and, most tellingly, Trent Reznor.

Homme, who appears jamming alongside the Nine Inch Nails mastermind and Grohl in the latter's documentary Sound City, recently told the BBC that he wanted Reznor to produce Clockwork. Instead, a tumultuous period ensued, both professionally (witness the exit of drummer Joey Castillo, who nonetheless appears on a few tunes) and physically (Homme claims to have "died" for a short time during asphyxia-related surgery complications in 2010 that left him bedridden for three months).

The resulting "audio commentary of a manic year," as he has described the new disc, was ultimately self-produced, albeit with evident influence from Reznor, as well as the pioneering mid-'70 work of one of his heroes, David Bowie.

The Thin White Duke-isms largely surface vocally, amid bellowing croons at the launch of "If I Had a Tail" and "Kalopsia" and the strident shouts in "Fairweather Friends." Traces of NIN, on the other hand, are even more prevalent yet subtler, in part because Homme's outlook has softened into a gothic bleakness, reminiscent of Reznor's opus The Fragile rather than the jagged, surging anger of The Downward Spiral, a clearer influence on the previous Queens record, Era Vulgaris.

I slightly prefer the swaggering attitude and industrial funk of that one, and though the ominous filigree of the new stuff buffs the edges of some of Homme's loveliest passages yet (the title track above all), it does so at the expense of sardonic humor, a hallmark that has set this long-gestating auteur apart from the start.

But as a whole it's an engulfing listen, particularly in its churning second half, where it turns ravishing in spots and achieves moments beyond what the band previously achieved. For all its Reznoresque qualities, which tantalize at the thought of what a proper collaboration might bring, this is fully Homme's vision as fleshed out by sympathetic comrades, including new drummer (and touring anchor) Jon Theodore, late of the Mars Volta and Zack de la Rocha's One Day as a Lion project.

It's tempting to consider this his/their best album so far, or at least since Deaf. Rather, it's the most advanced Queens assortment since then, as much a palette-replacing piece as that breakthrough was, and more cohesive than anything else in their catalog. What's more, it's the album that should vault Queens of the Stone Age to arena-filling globetrotter level.

Already a top festival attraction – slated for more than a dozen this summer in Europe, followed by August sets at Lollapalooza in Chicago and the massive Sturgis Rally in South Dakota – the band seems poised to embark with a powerful production, a spectacle to measure up to strides lately from Muse and the Killers. The sound and vision unveiled at the Wiltern, a blend of dark animation (cross Gorillaz with the original Heavy Metal magazine comics) and austere yet gripping menace à la NIN and Tool, was overwhelming enough to feel like it should have been road-tested at the Forum.

Smartly, despite how much this capacity crowd would have gone ape over hearing a new album front to back, Homme instead spread 9 of its 10 bits into a 22-song set filled with precisely executed crowd-pleasures ("No One Knows," "Go with the Flow," "Little Sister") and complementary deep tracks to thrill die-hards. That batch included the swirling "I Never Came," a psychedelically potent treatment of "Turnin' on the Screw" and the stoner fantasia "I Think I Lost My Headache," played with a lava-orange sun setting amid desert hills on the giant screen behind them.

It's already a killer package that would slay at Staples Center, especially with, say, Arctic Monkeys opening. (Alex Turner was on hand Thursday night, by the way, as was Morrissey and Jack White. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Grohl and/or Reznor were there, too.) What it all signifies – and who actually played what – remains to be seen. But the Wiltern show piqued fascinations while reminding that, whatever the case behind the scenes, this remains a mighty live force, so well-rehearsed that it's as if they never stopped.

Their return couldn't be more impeccably timed. At the moment we're in abundant supply of delightfully twee indie outfits yet woefully short on intelligent, innovative heavy bands, ones with accessibility enough to engage and surprise a wide swathe of fans. That tide is turning, perhaps undetectably thus far, although Muse's rise and the clamor for Black Sabbath's return are clear indicators of just how hungry for heartier fare people are again.

Combine it with the inarguable fierceness of QOTSA 6.0, about to be on broad display, and by the thick of summer we may have reached the tipping point toward a new resurgence.

User Agreement

Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial
slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about
tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to
allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to
republish your name and comment in additional Register publications
without any notification or payment.